Touched by God
by Danny Barefoot
Summary: One girl survived the Lighthouse. With her parents, she's seeking Asylum in England, along with some kind of life. Meanwhile, somebody's telling the BR story again, as it's never been told before. CHPT8 UP-COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

_Notes: This story is Post-BR, set largely in the UK. If memories need refreshing, Yuko is the Lighthouse girl with the poison, who caused the death of five other girls. This is movieverse with Yuko's background as per the manga (Yuko has lovely, normal, parents, has been a strong Catholic, and suffers appalling hallucinations). Needless to say, she does not kill herself._

_Battle_ _Royale does not own me...sorry, got mixed up. 'The Lion and the Mouse' I can partially claim–but thanks to Ceres Wunderkind and Aesop for inspiration._

* * *

The Toyotas and Hondas sped past the hospital in Plymouth, and her mother held her. Quickly, as if neither of them had skin. She imagined it, walking away–if that car snagged her, didn't stop, how much her end would hurt–she said she'd see her parents tomorrow. Waved at the ones who would have died to get her back, walked away without looking at their faces.

Hell would wait. All that her sins could deserve was Life.

She walked, bowing in all directions, passing the forms she couldn't read, in careful order. Small, timid, and anyone she passed avoided her eyes and talked in whispers.

She passed the psych ward 'airlock' quickly, stopped at the front desk. The newspaper was there. The Indian desk orderly looked from her to the paper–she saw him look, when she forced her eyes up from the photo of herself, with a bar over her eyes. The orderly spoke in English to the nurse beside her, who nodded slowly, and gripped the desk too hard. Yuko Sakakai stopped crying. Being searched and unpacking–things she was _good_ at.

After they finished, a tubby Chinese girl flew from a room down the corridor. She left off berating an orderly to welcome the newcomer with a smile, in appalling Mandarin.

Yuko looked up, and saw Haruka Tanizawa's face. Shrilling away about rashes and soap as if everything were perfect–she ducked her head in shame, and slipped past without a word in return to the door with her name on a sticker. The room was white, reeked of cleaning fluid, and the blood was there. Like the stain on her eyes from a light.

Yuko unpacked again, clothes and books, fast as soldier digging into enemy soil. She pulled the hospital blanket around her, and skimmed Luke 15, as always, to be able to sleep. Then she clasped hands and shut her eyes.

They opened. Too frightened to look at darkness, Yuko gabbled out a Hail Mary, and was silent. Cold air seeped through the communication grille.

"I'm sorry…"

No answer. Yuko gazed up at the clock–Fourteen hours till visiting. Thirty gaping minutes till dinner–till she could find out if anyone here wasn't afraid of her, or dead.

* * *

___(Extract from _The Lion and the Mouse _chptr1, published 2003, UK;_

_There might've been something before the lab, but I don't remember that, so I begin there. One of the things I've had to learn is to trust memory._

_I remember my cage. The darkness beyond, full of the strange lights and great noises that determined our deaths. The heaps of dead mice, purple under their fur. The dream-air. The Pit. And the Replicants, of which every cage knew within three minutes of the first test_–_the thing that made every cage, save for mine, into a mere cluster of mice; alone, fearful._

_You've heard the worst; allowing that mice are the most kindly, foolish, trusting and selfless animals that exist. Made to be together, as I remember._

_I will prove this by telling you what we thought about cats–)_

* * *

_"Have you prayed since coming here, Yuko?"_

"No."

"Have you had any flashback experiences?"

"No." Yuko glanced down as the translator spoke, chewed her ring finger. It wasn't just exposing her demons to a shockingly-dressed 18yr old. The doctor, a bald, heavy man, had time after every single answer to be silent, and look at her with his metal-blue, lifeless eyes…

_Do not be racist! They, the government, are racist, and it's the only advantage a lying murderer has left _…

_Your country grew you wrong, evil from birth. Do not think._

"I've only recited." Yuko let out, "Just said words to myself."

"Not only the mad have voices in their head. I've heard prayer can involve listening as well as talking…"

"No–No."

Yuko believed that God was in man. She didn't cower, or flinch, just shrank awaywithin her skin.

"How do you relate God with what happened to you?"

"It wasn't God's will; what I did."

"Do you think your actions were understandable by reason of what you knew at the time?"

"It was my demons." There was silence after the translator stopped speaking.

"Then your friends were not responsible." No. no. no. "Why not?"

"They weren't. You stupid man, they didn't know, they were scared and angry, they were the bes–!" Yuko's breath stopped.

"What, before the incident, was the state of your own knowledge and emo–?"

"You…you don't try to catch me out!" Her shoulders were curling in. "They, I, _I_ _should've known_…" Silence.A drop of red fell onto Yuko's skirt from her mouth.

"What were your friends like, Yuko?"

* * *

___(Extract from _The Mouse and the Lion _chptr5;_

_His eye filled the lattice of the net; I could no more have looked than at the sun, if there had been any sun in there. But the lion, the monstrous rat-eating beast was trapped, with nothing but poisoned meat. I could leave him, with the bodies of the demon Replicants, that were between me and the door._

_I stumbled over the tail of the creature that had looked like Y-558. I had to get out; this wasn't my tragedy, not my end. I was the victim, silent while the devils killed and killed._

_All I'd done wasshake _nonono, not me, no _at_ _the face of S-411. Robots, tiny possessing creatures, a mind-destroying drug, whatever things the humans had made totorment us–could they be sick of killing? She–it–looked sick. But grateful, for something, and I didn't know what._

_Y-558._ _Her face was beautiful and alien, like the lights outside our cage. My friend, her teeth in S-411's face, friend and champion of all, blood crusted on her whiskers, the one who'd saved my live._

_It wasn't her. They had taken her, left a murdering Replicant demon…as I watched? The moment she saw C-536 as I saw her, throat spillingout, her friend…?_

_H-754._ _The Replicant S-411 had scattered things like thread from her belly. When had she turned into a monster? Standing up to S-411, angry and unafraid? Saying without shame–no, no, no, that was so like you;_

"It could've been any of us…!"

_Slowly, aching to run, run, run, I went back to Y-333, and sank on my haunches. The meat still hung from her teeth. I shifted her over. Fur stuck out horribly from a puffed face, twisted with agony. I looked, screamed _no, I just, I only, _but it was _her _face. I skittered to Y-558 and H-754, buried my nose in the stink and tore pieces of them away, tears flying out like blood._

_No metal. No monster sat in their brains. Just the most kindly, foolish, trusting, selfless animals in the world–my friends._

_Murderers._ _Me.)_

* * *

"Before Chisato went–she said Yukie had done it…ah, ah over a boy. Always, boy-crazy Chisato." Yuko saw the interpreter's facethrough the mist, and patted her hand. She was sorry for hurting her, sorry she couldn't stop.

"You've done very well to say that much so soon, Yuko. But things are going to get better than the last few months. There will be changes; in your circumstances as well."

"What? I've murdered my friends–and I should be worried about starting college?"

"Most girls would be seeing a chance to make friends. With you, it's more of a choice."

"I have no choices."

"You're alive because of a choice."

"Somebody else's."

"We'll end the session here. By the way, are you writing anything at present? A diary, even something entirely imaginary?"

"The last time I imagined something, people died."

"You saw something concrete, and terrible. Imagination, ah, it's like a spell, which can curse, or remove a curse. That's C.S. Lewis." The translator stumbled over that, but was rewarded by Yuko's faint look of interest. "Just imagine like Isaiah. Swords into Ploughshares."

* * *

_Sue spoke Chinese even worse than Yuko, but they talked anyway. When Yuko felt social, Sue was unquenchable and inconsiderate; when Yuko wanted to be alone and die, Sue was offended and abusive._

Which was quite fitting, and suited Yuko entirely.

"Some–" She knew more Chinese swearwords than Yuko knew Japanese "–stole my meds. Bit crazy not to angry, right? And they think I, I, uh _Hari-Kiri_, 'cos I say I, I _think _of cutting; Big Brother eat heart. No reason, I _Hari-Kiri_. I think of…." She gasped put one finger up, and gestured quickly around the tiny dining room, "This. More shut up, I…" She made the appropriate action. Yuko took another spoonful of cornflakes, because she had nothing to say.

Her parents visited daily, having nothing else to do, but learn a new language, find work, and find a country. They always brought posters, of London landmarks, bible verses and bored looking cats. The blood slid down her walls from behind them, but Yuko put every one of their posters up.

Most of the other patients were quiet, unremarkable types. An awkward boy in aerobics sometimes had Takiguchi's face, but she knew it wasn't real–not even a full flashback, just nightmares moving out of sleep.

It was worst when she saw Utsumi in the sad smile of a nurse, bleeding onto the carpet like the risen Jesus–her demons poured terror into her mind. And _she_ remembered, the kindness of the dead to a mad, stumbling girl. They'd wrapped her in blankets, hugged warmth into her without getting cut; and smiled–drawn the fear out. Memories before the Lighthouse were colorless, hazy, and the most painful of all.

Her Daddy said her friends were in heaven. To her eternal shame, Yuko no longer trusted what her parents said. Whatever she knew about friends, and murder, they didn't.

Yuko was quiet, obedient, and resisted every urge to talk to her victims–she wanted to be with her parents, soon, for as long as she could be. If only it was safe for them. When a young orderly pushed her into an empty bedroom, and whispered a suggestion, Yuko froze through. Her next movement was an hour later, when half the staff had answered the orderly's cries for help. In their next session, the doctor's first real question was what had happened. Yuko gazed at him like a cornered rabbit, and calmly lied.

Crying 'evil' was no longer a thing she could be allowed.


	2. Chapter 2

The last time she'd come back to her parents–Yuko couldn't remember that too well. Left on the rocks by the sea, a filmy thing with mouth and eyes–she supposed it must've been terribly confused.

So she walked out to her parents, uncertain. They were wearing the best clothes they still had, and smiled like they were afraid.

"Darling. Feel better?"

"Perfect." It was easy.

As her mother held out the largest bunch of flowers Yuko had seen, their fingers brushed; both of them gripped at once. And the woman cried and breathed like Yuko could never remember her mother crying; but now, only now, she knew it was her. The bouquet was crushed between them, infusing their air and spilling round their feet.

Yuko saw her father still standing by them; still compelled to wait. She hid her eyes, immediately tried breaking away to hold him; it wasn't easy.

Sue had said goodbye, insisted she ring, back in the hospital–Mum and Daddy had always said she was good at making friends. And she'd just walked out alone, the last–no one to say she was Yuko, not a stranger, that she'd never go away or hurt her parents again. No one to lie.

Yuko looked her father in the eye. If she was alone again for a second, she would _have_ to remember this. If Mum and Daddy were ever to look at her without hurting, because they couldn't be sure.

All in all, it wasn't the picture that had got Yuko to the toilet, when the canteen served spaghetti in mushroom soup; before the smell hit, or somebody took a spoonful before her eyes. Too much hurt. But it was the first thing in two months she had had strength to call good.

* * *

"Don't these British buses seem empty!" Yuko remembered a coach that hadn't been empty, and shivered. Her Daddy looked at the floor, and she desperately squeezed his hand. His right hand, the one she'd broken in her bedroom door when she was eleven and they were talking for the first time about a psychiatrist... 

Hurting people. That was her, her life.

They stopped off at a Thai restaurant, took their time over ordering, and talked about things with no immediate human connection like exchange rates, term times, and the bed-sit they had just for the moment. Yuko strained to listen even superficially; her look was the dull confusion of a permanent comatose listening to the disabled Olympics.

When the food arrived, Mum briefly said Grace; Yuko shut her eyes and mind. Her mother, looking happy but nervous, asked what she'd been reading in her bible. Yuko gave the short list of verses she'd stared at for hours at a time.

"Good verses. 'A very present help in trouble'–and when else would you really need it?" Yuko couldn't even smile at what her father thought, "Have you been sleeping well, Yuko-chan?"

"A bit better."

"Ah, the medicine will definitely help. And it's certain to get better with time." There was little they wanted to say that they could, so they ate in silence. The name change wasn't something they wanted to talk about, but they did;

"…we're quite safe, Yuko-chan, but there's been a lot in the papers about us. Some people...there must be a name you've always admired?"

"I don't mind. Any name."

"Also…we've been asked please not to talk to anybody about…the Act. Any…details about how it works. Mother and me can't talk about it either." Yuko shifted 'asked' and 'can't'.

"The CD I had–from Kawada-san. I think he wanted papers to…tell people what happened, Daddy."

"Ah…I don't know…"

"Yuko-chan; he wanted you to be safe." Mother touched her hand quickly.

Is it because of…?"

"No."

"No. You told everything to the police here, and the…police back home will have to be happy with that." Yes, Home. 'Us' was another shock; us was five living people in the world.

Yuko decided this was the only time she could ask the question with one admissible answer.

"Mother, Daddy…are you sure they'll let us stay?"

"Yes Yuko; certain. Nobody who saw you could let you be unhappy, or turn you away."

Sadly yes; but Yuko realised very hard that they couldn't see her. The careful, polite Gajin who made deals instead of accusing, and really had no reason at all not to send her home to hell. And her mother could do nothing to keep her, nothing but look at her with painful love, and follow her to the end. Yuko needed that, more than she was afraid to hurt her parents more.

"We've got Humanitarian Protection, Yuko-Chan; they'll let us stay as long as Japan isn't safe. We'll even be able to vote, after three years."

"Hmm. Do the different parties in England all say the same thing too?"

Yuko smiled up at her parents. After a few seconds, her mother looked away, moved her hand to her face so casually it almost shattered–Yuko stared back. Her father just stared at her.

"Kaori; it'd be better if we said it." Mother shook her head slowly, then threw it down and spoke to the table in a monotone;

"We thought it would only be bad schools, ungodly children. So God punished us, but you hadn't done anything wrong–we _know_ nothing you did was you! We didn't speak out, didn't say the Act was wrong and we're sorry, Yuko, sorry…"

Her father had bowed his head too, tears gathering at the edges of his glasses. Yuko looked between them numbly.

"It will be difficult," Her father asserted after they'd both calmed down, "But there must be something we can do. What good is a punishment that makes it impossible for you to make the right choice next time round?"

Yuko said nothing, and tried to smile with nothing but happiness in her face. Daddy and Mother didn't understand–for them, it was worse.

* * *

"Sure? Let us off London train…with _one_ camera?" Mother laughed and held Yuko's shoulder, as the ticket inspector haughtily waved them out. 

months after arriving, Yuko felt like a nomad; one of those born-in-the-saddle Mongols, most bloody army in history. After all those trains, buses, waiting rooms, this was home.

"Tokyo is much worse." Daddy assured them. "People wear smoke-masks, can you imagine?"

Shiroiwa had had the approximate population of a London borough. Yuko walked close to her mother, tried to look at the buildings, not the people; at least any she fixed on walked oblivious to the others, unaware. She didn't see anybody she knew.

At the flat, Yuko unpacked within a minute and dropped herself onto the beds and sofa, as well. All for her parents–alone, there was no point in doing _anything_. As Daddy got out a bottle of lemonade mother extracted, as if it were an Edo period statuette, a brand new disposable camera. "One moment!" She went out, rang the next flat's bell.

"Kaori…we don't know them yet…"

"Souchiro, this will be one photograph. And we'll know who they are in a moment!" Yuko heard a door open outside; "Hello. I want…of family? You..."

The young woman next door came round, and the Sakakis huddled together. Their neighbour had Chisato's face and laugh, but Yuko looked up at her mother, and felt safe.

Kaori pulled herself up, and hugged the woman; who gave the camera back, and wandered out with a bemused smile. Yuko sat up, as her mother took a brown-covered book from the suitcase.

"Did you want to look at these photos again, Yuko-Chan?" It didn't look well-thumbed, unless the reading had been careful, and very slow. Yuko bit her lip for a minute, and looked up.

"Just once, please." Five minutes, one photo. Then she gave it back, and her mother took out a box of matches and a newspaper, and burnt it. The first baby photograph, to her fifteenth birthday. Her mother looked at her, and held the little cheap camera to her heart.

They took a bus, if not a red one, into the city, and saw everything that was free. Hyde park, Buckingham palace, the horribly muddy river, Tower Bridge. Outside parliament, a couple of Japanese women in red-stained sailor dresses and a man in an Amnesty International shirt were leafleting. After a moment, Daddy went to take one, while Mother hid Yuko's eyes in her stomach. A street away they walked past a few ragged fliers of Yuko, alone, with a blacked out face. Yuko couldn't find the energy to work seriously at English classes, but could read the words "Labour…simply let…DANGEROUS…"

Her parents walked between the wall and the crowd, worried and confused people. Yuko breathed out, put her arms round both their waists, and asked what the leaflet said;

"Well, erm…'There is…almost….certainly s-strong….C-O-E-R-C-IVE ele-m-ment…'" He smiled wretchedly.

"Please," Yuko gazed up at her father "Don't be sorry, Daddy; its how things are."

* * *

St Paul's Cathedral. Yuko walked to the altar, and clasped her hands. 

Years ago, God had been like memorising the episodes of an anime. When everyone knew, and let her know, that she was too scared to jump into a pool, or go down a slide, nobody knew she had a private little superiority. She hadn't even connected it with her parents.

It was the stories, really. That was what she first talked to Pastor Min about, why David _had_ to defeat Goliath so messily? He said the only one who could spare a demon was Jesus. She was nine.

A week later she told two boys fighting over a marble they'd end up killed each other unless they stopped. Well, screamed it. Three days after that, someone had been crying in the stall next to her–sat on the toilet, she'd prayed for courage, and knocked. It was a girl who bullied her as much as anybody, and it didn't make her scared–only after she'd read more, it made her think. She'd starting to feel then. Somebody she _didn't_ understand, and whogave what she'd never thought to ask for, immaterial and precious as an embrace.

Her Confirmation was after the first time she came out of hospital. She'd felt terrified, a shame to her parents. The words had run together like the colours of light, and she'd looked back. There was hardly anybody her age in the Church, but she knew then. Their children might be boycotting school and taking drugs, but these adults here were straining with her, towards God. And she could _see_ him, the whites of his laughter-creased eyes, smell the blood–but it didn't matter. She _felt _things she would only recall in a handful of moments through her life–and safer than she'd imagined she could feel. And she was stumbling though everybody to her parents, saying thank you, thank you, she loved them.

When there were stabbings at school, talk of hideous things in casual voices; the Spirit had held the demons down. And that blessed feeling had filled her, _moved her_, when she'd opened the bottle, shaken out, and stirred in. Before she remembered them, her friends were gone, and then she was alone. For a long time, always spreading further back.

She could not use or deserve her blessings. Forgiveness? A just, a _sane _God could not forgive her, when the demons still held her on that cold, red floor, speaking to her fear.

God was still God, the most loving friend Yuko had ever known. And He would destroy her if she was ever in his presence again. That was the rules.

She walked back to her parents, and they left in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

(Extract from The Lion and the Mouse, chpt2;

"_And on foraging…"_

"_Not talk about food this early in the morning…"_

"_Okay, C-536, it's you again. Cleaning–"_

"_How early..?" S-411 whispered–the others clustered round her, squeaking comfort. There was no sun, no night._

"–You _do cleaning, S-411; leave nothing for the enemy." We all laughed dutifully; the cage was cleaned regularly by the Things. Whenever it happened, departing with a bad smell, we had always pushed every hair through the bars beforehand._

_Similarly, 'foraging' meant trundling over to the food slot, and doling out the pellets._ _Y-558 wrote up a new schedule every possibly-morning, and always C-536 that job regardless, because she loved to think she was giving us food, as much as Y-558 loved schedules that let mice continue to live. Not 'needed'–always, they loved._

_The food arrived. S-411 looked at me hesitantly;_

"_Should we say Grace?"_

_I looked blankly into a silence anything but blank. Everyone knew about the Green Mouse, like everyone said they remembered fields, and parents. But all without specifics, vague compared to our cages and pellets. Cornstalks and cheese-crumbs could be a memory in our blood. The thought was inescapable that every mouse had been born where we were, and that we believed in what we had never seen._

"_You wondered if the Things are closer to the Green Mouse, being so high?" H-754 finally muttered, "Wondered if He's really just on their–?"_

"_I think it's a good idea." Y-558 interrupted, "If it helps Y-102 even a little..?" I tried to speak._

"_I'd be happier." Y-333 spoke up. She and H-754 had the last job after mashing pellets, which was keeping me warm, curled round like sisters in a nest._

_Nobody really asked Him, and even I didn't, out loud. We never talked about freedom, and ate a little more easily._

_That night, I whispered thank you to S-411, thank you, and we rubbed heads a long time. I'd never seen S-411 even nuzzle before, and we had no privacy. Yet we surprised each other; right up to the end.)_

* * *

_"…you know we…weren't sure about asking…"_

"It's okay. Wherever I am…I might as well be working for graduation."

"Phone in at lunchtime; and _say_, if you feel frightened. Remember God loves you, we love you, and… the Potter in Jeremiah. Starting again, stronger than before."

Yuko waved till her parents reached the bus stop. Then she looked up the stairs, at the teacher waiting by the doors.

School without uniform. 18, 00 strangers. She asked about shoes.

"You can keep them on over here, love." After five minutes, Yuko got over that she _wanted _to, _Arigato, Arigato–_but anything to feel calm.

Then a swift passage of Formica tiled corridors, with emphasis on '_This _is where you come in an emergency, but _tell somebody_.' (Surprise to hear the students sat around the 'SEN room' got special help with writing; it sounded terribly unfair). And then homeroom, with the SEN teacher by the door, a lacklustre 'Guys, that's Yuko at the back there…' from the front, and two-dozen eyes passing her over in turn.

Yuko tried to remember starting at Shiriowa High. She'd been scared of people then too, would've been lost without Yukie, everybody's friend. She looked up slowly, gripping at her chairlegs, to see if Yukie was here.

Faces were varied, made unreadable by tiredness, but a few students were chatting quietly and smiling. The timid red-haired girl; Yuko had never been a judge of character–would she just hide? Kill the maybe-Brazilian girl flicking paper at her head, before herself?

She couldn't stop it–had no control. The faces before her were foreign, but all too familiar. Murders, chatting over strange music as their blood pooled round her slippers. She shouldn't be here, if they saw her they would start killing–

"Hey, ah, you okay?"

Yuko didn't look up–couldn't even bear to pretend she didn't understand. She tried to sink into a scar on her desk, as someone sat down on her other side. A few words passed over her head and someone stepped hard on her foot. She looked up.

She hadn't seen Hirono die; that classmate was waiting for her in hell, instead of discussing shoes two tables away. This girl was just her lost cousin–bad clothes, one earstud, short whispy hair.

Yuko looked at her, opaquely. Just a person–a murderer, loved by God–no hate, or love in her inorganic blue eyes. If she was going to push a scared transfer around; there were certaintly worse things.

The pressure on her foot was released, and a stream of accented English passed round her. After a couple of moments, Hirono stuck out a fist, laughed, and prodded Yuko's hand with it twice.

"Please? Slower?"

More laughter and friendly sounding incomprehensibles, then the girl twatted her round the head, and strutted back to her original seat.

Yuko slowly felt her head. She was still alive. Nobody else spoke to her, though she got more friendly looks. In fact, the whole class seemed more relaxed.

Yuko looked at Hirono. At her own face in the window. To read her own eyes was something she'd never attempted; faintly hooded, yes, and dull…but it surprised her. No one with will to fight their demons would speak to her freely.

Of course, from looking, nobody would think her dangerous…but Yoshimi hadn't been, and no one needed telling what _she'd_ done. Whatever happened to Yoshimi…? Alive in Shiriowa, she must've felt worse than this, not knowing yet that the love and happy chatter was a dream and the nice girls were covered in black smoking eyes.

Yuko looked at the turned backs; saw dead Yukie smile, give her a Peace sign.

It was a good dream.

* * *

_"You did brilliantly," The SEN teacher beamed, "Talk to somebody else if Lois bothers you again, though."_

"I don't know what she say…_Sensei_…do you…?" Hesitate; then clasp hands. The woman took her quickly to see the Chaplin–another English novelty; but that was the last thought Yuko had.

"Please…?"

"You want to pray for someone?"

"Yes, want you to pray, for Yoshimi-chan. She was…bad girl, pretty, had boy, Kuramoto–all dead. And Yukie, Satomi…them." She shrank in as his hand went to her.

"Okay, it's okay. You needn't tell me any more. We can pray about them now." He looked at her. Yuko tried to breath.

"I can't! You pray!"

"Please calm down, Yuko. You knew them–"

Yes. She was the only one who might've done it. If she was such a hypocrite; 'I killed you, but I'm praying, and _that's _going to do you some good.' Hadn't she done stupider things, after all?

"I, ah, I heard you were coming here. I've been–" The Chaplin trailed off–looking at her eyes, Yuko realised. He was a very young man.

"I'm sorry. Can't go back there."

In lunchtime homeroom, Yuko looked for people she could talk to, if it became necessary. There were quiet and less scary ones, like the red-head and a thin African on the next desk; but she knew from Shiriowa that being quiet herself wouldn't help either of them. She needed someone like that laughing girl in the front row, without the feeling to shoot before the one she'd try to kill. Someone with a group that would let her blend in. Who'd never, never, care enough to be a friend.

Yuko trotted over on the way out, and asked some silly questions about the lessons that let Jen, the girl, look caring in from of her friends. She smiled a few times. She saw the emptiness, and bore the smiles returned. Later, she went to the toilets, leant over a sink, and tried to breath calmly. She couldn't look at the mirrors; couldn't come out till the voices outside had gone.

She had to keep dreaming. Or wake up back in the only place that felt real.

* * *

_"…__Wild_ _Seven._ _The ones who made us kill each other will not dare to see; but you who I am speaking to–you will remember. Good luck_."

The PC switched off the video–Shuya's face vanished. Yuko looked down, and saw blood on her fingers. Her father stumbled up;

"Officer-san, tomorrow–?"

"Don't know anything." Yuko murmured, "Nothing about him at all." She started to shake.

"Certainly, you can go home; you'll have to come back for a few quest–"

"We have nothing to do with this, these terrorist threats…he saved our girl's life, but…"

"Shuya was a good boy, wasn't he Yuko? Even after his father died, always playing music and smiling?"

Yuko raised her head.

"He means it. He's going to do all those things." She cried silently at her mother face that it was okay, she couldn't understand, had to keep thinking that what anyone did before the Program could still mean anything at all.

The officer smiled as the interpreter drawled it all back;

"Don't look worried! This isn't your problem, not even England's problem. You're free to go. Just think of this evening as a window into a crazy world."

Yuko's parents looked at her, and nodded faintly. They went out and got back in the police car.

"She didn't have to see that–"

"_You _needn't have come at all, oh, Mum–" Mr Sakakai put his arm round both their shoulders.

"_This_ is what we need to remember. Even without a camera." His wife happily poked his cheek, and Yuko found it easy to smile.

* * *

_Lois tried talking to Yuko a few times over the next week; latching onto Jen's group often took more effort than Yuko could gather (Lessons, too–discipline non-existent compared to Japan didn't help there). Yuko thought Hirono might've lost interest if she'd realised Yuko was as terrified of her as she was of anybody._

At least now she was smiling. And speaking quite slow and deliberately. Yuko tried to catch a receding person's eye, smiled back, moved away–a hand jerked her back.

As Yuko began to distinguish phrases and words, she became aware of a loose grouping of girls similarly dressed to Lois, and a couple of boys. Looking at her, smiling with casual, vicious eyes.

Yuko was frightened and confused–but they weren't angry, weren't going to kill her. So she kept waiting.

"Say something! Stop just _looking _like that! What's your GAME?" Lois slapped her, as if batting a mosquito. "Tried talking to yer properly…" Yuko's head drifted back; her feet were stuck down. All she did was watch…

She came back almost with a gasp. There was a thin black arm in front of her eyes, and a grating voice. Lois was looking at him, sneering–behind her, a big Indian boy was getting to his feet. The African boy must have knocked him down.

The Indian smiled, and blood poured from Oki's mouth. Yuko could see the edge of the axe in there–

For the next seconds, what Yuko did was look at the African boy's face. No purchase; no appeal. She was falling, always falling but the ground would hurt, _this was her fault, _there was going to be blood and the demons were looking out of all their eyes…

Then she grabbed the boy's arm, started screaming something. He looked back at her, as the fist caught his jaw. Yuko felt a drop hit her shoulder; then he looked away, and punched Oki back, as she fell.

She was aware again in an empty space. Oki was lying face down, out cold. The other boy squatted against the wall, rubbing his teeth.

He looked at Yuko. She stared back, then hid from his eyes.

"Okay–next time, not bothered. My name, Paul."

The mark, head-height on the wall–_that_ was from now, like the noises coming back from the last few momments. The SEN teacher was running across the gravel; she had that much time, to start running the other way, up the stairs, over the rail…

She was starting again alright.


	4. Chapter 4

_(Extract from _The Lion and the Mouse _chptr1;_

_You've heard the worst, given that mice are the most kindly, foolish, trusting and selfless animals that exist. Made to be together, as I remember it._

_I will prove this by telling you what we thought about cats. There were several of them about the lab, staring into our cages, occasionally dropping effortlessly off the shelves to their bowls. Their stillness fascinated everybody; the calm that meant we could scarcely watch them for long, as we scurried about vital and useless chores. We spoke of them infrequently, with genuine admiration, how they coped so well, were so much closer to ourselves than those awful Things, were a model of endurance for ourselves…everyone had some idea what they did to mice–I know, because I did once–but no one had seen a mouse and the cats alone. Except me._

_And I did a poor job of living with it, enfolded in love, till they switched our cage. The six of us blinked up at the light, and blinked up at the thing that was bigger, and alive, and the _same shape…_though I know there was time before that, I have to fight for every memory.)_

–0–

"Yes. You've taken this seriously…thank you." Kaori Sakakai walked down the hall to sit beside Yuko, hands on her knees

"They're happy for you to start over after a three day holiday, Yuko. They're sure you'll be okay. The two boys are on their last suspension–they're…_vicious_, from what I heard."

She hung her head. Yuko couldn't remember her mother condemning anyone so harshly in her hearing. And she couldn't forget the boy–Paul's–eyes. They hadn't been vicious, they'd been afraid…

Teachers silently passed. Her mother held her shoulder; Yuko looked ahead

"Darling, any longer off, things would just get harder. You were really brave to start–"

Her parents had already decided, her mother found it hard to state–Yuko didn't care.

"Special school?"

"Oh…Yuko.

"You must believe; one day this is going to end. School makes people believe things–others, and you. What happens can effect your whole life."

"Can you say it," Yuko managed, "What it _is_ that's going to end" Puzzled look, "So I know you can imagine what you're talking about."

"Yuko–"

"I'm not angry, I'm scared! All my friends from sch–for years–its too obvious to describe; it's like I'm not the crazy one! Can't you see?"

Her mother looked away for long enough to frighten.

"I see a girl stronger than last week; with more strength than she knows. And she has God beside her whether she accepts it or not. That gives her a chance…a chance, yes, because no one can fail, with God's help."

They didn't need storming, screams, or a single threat. Her mother didn't have to say that she couldn't be what she had to be, if Yuko said the things that sank in her own insides. It was there, the work-a-day, all-significant sin.

Had she wished for her parents at all on the island? So quick, she'd been truly alone inside, and only listened, with every second, for God. Stupid, again stupid–the only thing she'd done right was never really hoping to escape.

The wisdom of what she'd run to, up the Lighthouse…? But she knew now, even if she'd got there, God would have been just behind. Always following, because the best moment of her life was when she'd said she was His. She had taken everything from him, and He was wondering what His daughter had done, with his help and blessings.

–0–

"_As the Deer longs for a stream of cool water, so I long for you, oh God…When can I go and worship in your presence? Day and night I cry, and tears are my only food; all the time my enemies ask me, 'Where is your God?'"_

"And now the more cheerful hymn from that psalm, 'As the Deer pants for the water' number 43."

"Certainly more cheerful." Janine warbled to Yuko afterwards, over her coffee, "Nice hymn, but one of those ones like God was your boyfriend or something, haha."

"I, I wouldn't know, sorry." Yuko wanly smiled.

It was the same week–her father had talked briefly to the minister, and she was there alone. 'C of E' looked pretty much like church back home, minus graffiti. It was pleasant, familiar after months–beautiful, viewed like an outsider. Remembering the prayers and blessings were for others; keeping your eyes from the faces at the back–quite bearable.

Strange to remember that she wasn't a minority. But Janine, the girl sat beside her, didn't assume she was a recovering Buddhist for a moment. She wore thick pink lipstick, and construction-worker's clothes. They'd talked nothing but trivialities, but, to a point, already understood each other.

"So, Yuko, you going to start come here? If you feel it's right…"

"Maybe, yes, try it."

"I'd like it if you could."

Yuko's hackles rose, till she remembered Janine could accept God's strength. The other girl leaned forward;

"Yuko, if there's anything…you can talk to Tom, the Minister. Or me, if you want, though I haven't any training or such."

Avoid Confession, it still comes…Yuko got out that she had sinned, in what she'd thought was God's will. Janine put a hand on hers, and the whisper flew out that the best person who lived could murder, and she was afraid.

Both girls stared for a moment like gunfighters. Then Janine smiled simply.

"So bad. We live pretty happily together all over, though we're terrible sinners. Even real murderers have love, and kindness. Because of God.

"It's terrible, and I all I can say is what I think. Nothing's worse than being stuck in your head. Choose some act you feel and know's right, anything, and just try to do stuff."

"Ah, ah, that won't…"

"Works don't redeem. But I promise you'll feel better in yourself, and you need to–because I know you can't swallow it straight off. That God forgives anything, no small print–no matter what you think you are. What'd you think?"

Yuko desperately tried to translate it all.

"I want believe…I want to…" Janine held her hand tighter. They were the last people left in the hall. Time passed.

"You need to pray, as well. Even just saying the words–sooner or later, you'll get to meaning them. Could we pray now, together?"

Yuko's head sank. Janine gripped her, closed her eyes;

"Father, please be close to Yuko, who loves you, and show her the way–"

Her voice only faltered in places. Yuko knew Janine could sense no feeling–she was sitting, shrinking, silent in her head. Janine prayed to the end–her open eyes were no weaker. Yuko stumbled up, bowed deeply.

"_Arigato, Arigato _Janine-San. God with you, f-for sure. _Arigato_."

Yuko had promised not to walk home alone, so they went together. They talked more, as Yuko's heart ached that she could not honestly go to Church again in any visible future. And she wished she had the courage to ask what was the sin she knew Janine had fought. And if Janine knew, could even believe for a time, that the same threats and visions wouldn't make her do just the same thing again.

–0–

Yuko got a letter in the next week. It was from Sue, the Chinese girl in the hospital–she'd been discharged last month, and insisted she'd been so deliriously happy, any absence of phonecalls had been totally forgiven. She was doing a host of exciting things, and could Yuko please write back? She put the letter on a shelf, and thought.

It was surprisingly easy–the teachers had a school to run after all. And Paul didn't search out crowds–he glancing bemusedly over his parka's woollen collar;

"Hey. This not bad school; if no trouble…?"

"It, it okay. I tell them, you okay." Paul's lip twisted

"You'd be liar."

The eyes–dark, hard, and so afraid. Because wherever he was, it was one place; where he could not stop fighting and believe he would live. She'd seen it. The corridor was empty for a moment. She was too afraid–to do anything about it.

"I, I…_Arigato, _thank you; for last week. You maybe make it worse, and it…ah…scare me, but, I'm terrible scared, all time. Scaredy-cat. _Gomene_, ah, sorry, and thank you."

Paul conveyed with both eyebrows a belief that scaredy-cat was not half-a-quarter of it. Yuko's was flushed, her insides were cold. Her hands writhed together…

"What, ah, which country you from?"

Nowhere she'd heard of.

"Your name...from Bible?"

"I get me England name. No Somalia name, before. No God, ever. No need."

Yuko saw no need in his eyes–and faintly, a twitch of regret that there was none.

"I'm…Japanese." Was all she got out; Paul smiled and said it.

"Setsuko Mimura Japanese–Nanahara Shuya too. Wouldn't mind Japan name."

Silence. The question jammed in Yuko's brain. Paul glanced back at a noise;

"Next trouble, I try just talk, okay? If it gonna work–_Gomene_? That sorry?"

"Yes!"

Yuko stopped her knees shaking after he'd walked away.

–0–

Nearly two months at school–Papa had a new job; Mother was looking for another one. After her single church visit, Yuko had started catching buses home 'with somebody' rather than waiting for one of her parents. 'Someone' had seen some friends outside a cornershop; so Yuko waited, stamping against the cold. Hearing the name, seeing the picture, buying the paper with coin-spilling hands.

"Excuse me…" The girl she walked with turned, "_You_ heard of Nanahara Shuya?"

"Naw, is he a Japanese rock star?"

"He was a boy," Yuko whispered, in Japanese, "Locked in a room, without food. I unlocked it. Never thought of that before."

Yuko walked, walked, presently on her own; looked into her street. No new cars–one bin man. Yuko saw he was Japanese and until he left, she didn't move.

"_American bases...Japanese embassy…co-ordinated wave…nearly 200…_" Souchiro Sakakai breathed in, bowed his head, and quickly straightened. Yuko's mother eased her daughter off her midriff, and sat her down.

"The poor boy could've done anything with himself. He could've; so it's not our respon…oh, Yuko. What can we do to help?"

"They think we're on his side," Yuko gasped, "The video said he'd attack America's allies–that means here, and he's going to do it! They know he's serious, and Japan'll want us back…"

"Yuko, Yuko…we've heard nothing since last month. And these bombs were…nearly last week. But, I always thought the police were lazy." Her father grinned bravely; her mother smiled back. "Come on. I need some help making tea." Yuko got up, and moved into the kitchenette like a sleepwalker.

"Ah, Yuko, I was looking forwar…I read something in the TV guide. You know that book you like, seems there was a BBC–"

Smiles can't be taken back. Yuko watched it, curled up by the sofa; telling her father all she remembered from the book, though mother kept saying he should be quiet and appreciate the pictures. Yuko thought about Lucy's cordial, about 'nearly 200', and dreams. There was no Narnia, and the Lighthouse was in the past, and she didn't see what other people saw. All those dead were out of sight, for now.

Yuko woke up in the dark–three hours made it a bad night. She flicked through a comic she'd got from the library, then slipped out of bed and into the flat. She leaned on the windowsill, and looked down at the black, lightly frosted street. Was there a way she could talk to Nanahara…? Would they let her? Maybe Paul…he definitely talked about Shuya like Takiguchi might've, about the hero of an Anime…she rubbed her eyes.

Streetlamp. The shape on its edge, quite still, but she couldn't think what it was. Still no new cars. She leaned over, and there was the face.

Yuko dropped down. A familiar face–one of so many. But this one was outside her home, at five in the morning, coming with a gun to order her out. To a place where her name was a number and she'd be alone when she woke. She could run out, hide in another flat–that would only work a while, if it were just the police.

Yuko looked at the flat door. Keys in her father's jacket, back of his door. She moved silently in, looked at her parents. The door of the flat. Her mother, her father. She moved.


	5. Chapter 5

(_Extract from the Lion and the Mouse, chpt 4;_

_Yes, they put us in a cage with a lion. Any humans reading this must be amazed that I couldn't work out the reason. But nothing those faceless and horrible masses did retained its sense to the other side of the bars._

"_Those eyes…" H-754 murmured "I can't know or imagine what they _did _to him, but it already seems worse."_

"_How did they ever tie him down?"_

"_How could they have let him be _dirty_?"_

_We could only speak because we had to; the change had come, and it always meant death. Other mice they threw back in the holding cages talked before they stopped eating, about things that looked like mice and killed, air that made you see things wrong and go insane, sucking mouths like the one that hummed in the lion's cage, that you could step into when the fear was too much. It all made just as much sense._

_Because of the others, I kept eating, stayed alive. But, slowly, inevitably, they began to gnaw at the ropes that held him down. He watched; still and unsurprised–as if even a mouse ought to act while it could. That was what his whole body said, the reason for life written on his head. They all loved him, and only I knew what cats did to mice._

_I was afraid. And, God help me, I thought I was alone.)_

–0–

"Did you ever–you know–as a student, go to anti-government protests?" Souchiro Sakakai asked his wife at breakfast; a few days later. She mutely shook her head, "Nor me. If I'd protested, once, I don't know how different I'd feel." The Zimbabwean man on his left nodded. "Ah, you never liked cornflakes did you, Yuko?"

Yuko looked into her bowl and swallowed, as if on something too big.

Most days, the family drifted between the Detention Centre's TV room and library. They split up only once a day–her parents had asked for her to come to the services, asked with pleading eyes, then finally gone, whispered to a guard on their way out. Then Yuko curled up in a corner, and the Bangladeshi girls playing cards stared impersonally. After a week, a Muslim Chaplin sat down and told her how Allah was a sea of mercy.

"How you cope? Tell my Daddy, come back."

In the evening, they were locked in together. Her mother sat and stared through a book, often in Urdu.

"Do you…still believe Yuko?" Her father asked, "I can't judge if you…" He cleared his throat, "I didn't realised English was so hard for you, when our classes were separate."

"Hard to work."

"It's good we're together, isn't it?"

Yuko turned over, and leafed through a bible, finding Job 3 from memory;

_Why let people go on living in misery? Why give light to those in grief? They wait for death but it never comes; they prefer a grave to any treasure._

The next day, her mother and father didn't attend the service, and they stayed together. But they weren't, because none of them could say, right then, that Yuko had been gone from the flat when her parents woke up. They'd spent their worst days when they could do nothing for her but wait. It hadn't wrecked them, like their daughter–but it was as if she'd dreamed that they'd understand her if they suffered.

She'd imagined what they'd feel, and now she turned from it every evening. It didn't matter that she'd been afraid, that she might never be strong enough to do what she wanted–they were the last two people her life could've helped.

–0–

"Statement. Again. This figure in the street–"

"You should know. And I not see right. Dark."

"Was it in uniform, was it armed? We find it hard to see what frightened you; we wonder if you had warning from somewhere–"

"Please! Miss…I don't see things right. Sometime…I never told psychiatrist this!" The MI5 woman waved a second.

"Pity he can't confirm."

"I think people are…others. From what happened before. But people really there, always."

Heavy sigh. "Not this time.

"No one stationed in visibility of your window, Nada. Arresting officers saw nobody on the street."

"Saw someone. I did, I don't see…ghosts!" For a second, a double of room and interviewer floated behind them. She was lying, it had to be a lie…

"Look, I know the Japanese courts never prosecute without confessions. Here, honesty's an optional treat for yourself. You discussed leaving the country or 'disappearing'? Your parents mentioned any…?

Yuko had _definitely_ thought about disappearing.

"You can stonewall. But, I honestly doubt it will be thought safe to release you, until this investigation finishes. You curious about your Leave to Remain? I might…"

"Police aren't Home Office. You don't know."

"Do you think this is a game, Yuko? You read the papers don't you? Keep up on news from home?"

Yuko shook her head, eyes bound with stone to her knees.

"One day, Yuko, you'll have a last chance to open up. Could be right now, never again. Uncertain times."

"Has…Shuya…done anything else?" The woman leaned back, laughed briefly;

"'First name terms with the Kaiser?' Sorry, British humour. Yeah, sniper attack. Our troops in the Middle East, day before your arrest. Two attempts on mainland Japan." Yuko found out later there had only been one.

"I don't know…I don't know why…"

"Yes. Some one has to find him, make him see sense. I wish…you know; that they did that with Rob. My boy–it was drugs with him. You help us–"

"No. You shoot him where he is. I know, he shouldn't…but I saved him, because he wasn't murderer–my fault! Don't you lie about a kid you had!"

"I said we should go over your statement again."

The MI5 woman was entirely blank. Yuko had long ago given up trying to relate her feelings to a human's.

–0–

Her father was alone when she reached the lunch hall.

"Your mother's gone to the infirmary, for a bit."

Yuko remembered Mr Sagara. When he'd told their church in Japan that after losing his job he no longer believed in God, and sat, arms hanging between his legs. Her father had thanked God then that more that two things made his own life worthwhile. She sat down by him, ignoring the familiar touch of curious eyes.

"I guess we can never really understand what you went through." Yuko felt nothing; finding his hand was something she couldn't help. "There's been a disturbance, I'm afraid."

"Tell me."

"You'll hear from someone. It was a suicide. An African woman. Your mother…was upset. She'll be okay."

Mother. Upset, infirmary upset, unable to function. The way of all flesh. With silences, and glances away–inescapable, and done.

"Ah…" Both Sakakai's turned, to one of the little Bangladeshi girls twisting her hands.

"Your…mother…karate? Good."

"No, no, Ju-Jitsu. Go, please." Souchiro looked miserably at Yuko. "She was afraid…the guards weren't doing their job properly. I'm afraid she won't be back with us for a week."

"Mum? Ju-Jitsu? Hit a guard?"

"Something like that, of course they…" Yuko's father looked at her, and quickly grinned back.

"Go Mum." Yuko heard herself say. Chisato walked away from them, as they kept eating.

Even most of the new arrivals were familiar to Yuko; the centre was that sort of place. But she was almost used to them now; her betrayal of a week ago bit bizarrely deeper. Being totally insane hardly worried by comparison, as she told the prison psychiatrist. Once she cared about the truth, way and life; now it was nice to think that everything she knew might be wrong.

–0–

The Sakakais were discharged before Kaori's little finger had come out of plaster. Yuko picked an electricity bill and another letter from Sue off the mat; her father read the assessment of their asylum reapplication again. A neighbour–the same old Malayan woman who'd taken their photograph on the first day–insisted on dropping by, apologising for causing all their trouble, and leaving some ratty-looking wine on the table.

"Is release from a Detention centre _supposed_ to be marked with a party?" Souchiro glanced around the empty flat.

"It nice that she's pleased to have affected a life," Yuko's mother sighed, "You check the wine's still drinkable."

Souchiro shook his head. Yuko stared; he'd always been willing to take a glass of champagne at her birthdays–she remembered her next was in only a month. "I've never felt too good about it–and it'd feel wrong if I wasn't cheerful already."

A hole opened in Yuko's stomach. They should be talking about it, even if the same thing had happened to them all. She needed something to say, that would even hold back all the things she'd done;

"I'm sorry, Mum, Dad. For running away. And not…"

They both smiled, "It was just a shock, darling."

"If you say you won't do it again, we trust that."

Yuko stared back. Searching faces for the pain that should be leaving with their breath. She must be so much weaker than them (Unless their pain was hiding like a killer, and never left for words…).

"We're just glad we can hear you say sorry."

–0–

"…I go down stairs, slowly. Our neighbour, old woman, leave as well–do Ti-Chi early, in park. I hear her bump someone, above me on stairs, and stop. She start screaming about seeing gun–I run down stairs. Man run down, show police badge, pull me back to flat. Parents still there. Awake. Police in uniform come, maybe fifteen minute later."

Paul had a look that Yuko recognised;

"Don't _you_ say my story no good!"

"You no lying. I think _they _story no good. Don't sound like raid, sound more like couple of police watching your flat, one of them try to trail you when you run out, and screw up. He decide right then to pretend they were gonna arrest you that morning, 'stead of watching and listening for you calling Nanahara, like any idiot do."

Before even the shock, Yuko felt pretty foolish. She wished she could see through Paul's eyes to a moving emotion.

"But, in street–"

"Man they didn't know about; _hiding_. Maybe couple Ninja come to drag you home; Japan got Ninja, right?"

"No…well, no surprise, nomore." It was the first time she'd seen him grin, "But, but, they can't do…?"

"You hear of Gunkanjima island? What they doing to suspects?" Paul sighed, "Or could be boyfriend sent man to watch you."

"I never….you mean Shuya? I…how you know Shuya? You really think he's good? And he not boyfriend either!"

Paul glanced at the ceiling, then spread his hands;

"Got broadband. Somalis, they say, why not my hero good Muslim fighter, like Saddam? But Nanahara fight for kids. And you see things–see the world needs fighting. To me, is sense."

"'Fighter'? Who your friends in Somalia? No…were you in war? Activist? Soldier?"

In short statements, Paul acquainted Yuko with the various meanings of 'soldier'. A teenager guarding a drug deal with a pistol. A boy with enough alcohol and drugs in him to shoot whatever he was pointed at. Stone killers, who didn't know the purpose of a safety catch.

"No Somali armies. No war, just life. No friends, no matter what anyone say." Yuko wondered if he'd just needed someone to talk to, until she saw his face when she asked why he left.

"You must know BR." She stammed on, "Still…I think they were my friends." Paul glanced upwards again; it was an efficient gesture.

"Your family here?" Paul shook his head;

"Foster-parents. No family."

Yuko wanted to say something about what Shuya was really like–ask how could he accept what he was so scared of–tell him that soldier, he himself, could keep secret what they both knew.In the end, she just confirmed that all parties involved were probably still watching her. Paul always left her very confused, and nearly as worried as the thought of a kidnap, or one of Shuya's new friends dropping by.

She walked away past a group of girls, who slightly lowered their voices. Some people had told her that Detention was barbaric and they were sorry for her–but no one was offering to walk home with her, and it was the least of her worries to ask.

It seemed like what she saw was closer to reality than what any one else did. The world was a terrible place of murder; but for the first time in almost a year, _her_ world of one terror had changed.


	6. Chapter 6

_(Extract from the Lion and the Mouse, chpt 7;_

_After the Lion had destroyed that place, I went away, down a drain. Mice can live anywhere, but the places they always find are dark, and too small to stand._

_For some time, I holed up in an old shop, where food went off faster than anyone bought it. There were two Things there–sharing the building with me._

_They looked old, but I hadn't much to compare them to, and did a pitiful job of reading faces as long as my body. But when I realised that part of the universe did not agree that I should die, it was them (The Lion before that, but he was a law of his own)._

_Sometimes they would talk to the shop mouse; though I somehow felt every roar they made had a meaning for me. They talking pleasantly, as far as I could tell, and just sometimes I would snuffle back;_

"_Five mice. Babies; put them on the counter, see me tear their throats. See…if you can let me live…if I can really live…")_

* * *

Living under surveillance from as many as three quarters, was something you remembered at surprising moments. When Mum answered Papa a little more sharply than he'd spoke, you knew someone heard it. Sitting in cold bathwater, you wondered if they looked away.

"People feel happier about God knowing all they do and think, than a stranger overhearing something they can't understand."

Yuko only muttered it, but still choked on panic when the silence deepened outside.

"Dad! I…I…what are you reading?"

"Another Agatha Christie, Yuko-chan. Just finished." Souchiro's voice came through the door.

"Good?"

"Not bad. Villain got tricked into confessing–They all end like that, these days." His tone was light–weightless, in fact; suffocating. Rather than answer, Yuko tried to lift herself from the bath. The water held her where she was.

Yuko had a long standing invitation to spend a weekend in London, with Sue from the Hospital. For the first time in ages, a small change felt like it mattered.

"They locked you up again, didn't they?" Sue gabbled as they stepped around piles of magazines, "Hope they eat shit, shit burgers, piss coke and drink piss–no one should ever get locked up."

"You read about…Shuya Nanahara? No, not music. Terrorist. Should he…?"

"Oh; he really believe whatever he does, he better go down fighting." She repeated it for Yuko, who could understand Sue's English half the time.

The two girls watched their way though DVD's about mad doctors in Korea, a fat, mad lady vicar, and a crazy platoon of old men in WWII. Yuko found she could keep up with English subtitles, and laugh in the right places. Sue's Mum made them real non-instant Ramen. Sue herself kept up a barrage of talk, even asking Yuko about God, though Francis Xavier could hardly have preached a thing she'd have taken in.

An utterly careless person…the only one Yuko could never hurt. Yukie, Shuya, Papa and Mum, Janine, Paul, even Lois...all of them, in some way, had cared about her.

Yuko still felt she could've stayed there forever. One of the ancient soldiers on TV was saying something about a Lighthouse.

"…three men up there; stairs collapsed and they couldna' get doon. Took 'em six months to think of a way to get doon."

"And that was?"

"To dismantle the Lighthouse; brick ba brick. Ye' gotta understand cap'un; after all that time, they were quite mad."

Yuko stepped into her own block of flats and waited at the door for her father. She heard someone coming down the steps; counted two flights before a young African in a woolly parka walked out past her.

"…Paul. Hey! Paul! Why you doing here…?" He didn't turn around, so she knew it was him, passing her father without looking, and going away…if he'd never learnt to march, he knew how to walk.

"Who was that, Yuko? Not…"

"Yes, Papa, one of the boys in that fight." Yuko wished she'd told someone that there had been sides.

"Pity he should be visiting someone round here. You should keep violent people like that at a distance, Yuko"

"Everyone…"

"_Yes_–but some people make no effort to control it. They believe it can't ever be done, just from trying without God's help."

Yuko kept walking. As if it had always been coming, through the whole tube ride and before that; there was a truce. It would crack if she tried to answer, shatter if she stayed in her room more than an hour.

Mum smiled as they came in; she was going over their papers again, looking tired. Her father too–Yuko could see him thinking of what he'd said, realising that it would make no change; he was helpless. She hugged him, and he responded after a moment.

"Darling…you're the only you. You're special, as you are."

Yes. And Shuya, working on a bigger, nearer bombs right now, with a passion that never starved. Paul, quietly walking away…Yuko wondered if he had Leave to Remain past eighteen. She thought how special they were; it was better than thinking about herself. And better than what she was thinking about.

You never knew, really, about people. It could only ever be faith.

The next day, an hour before school ended, Yuko stood on her own corridor, two flights of stairs up. She took a deep breath, knocked at the far end.

"Hello; I live this corridor. You know my friend Paul? African boy, skinny…?"

"Was work any better today, dear?"

"So-so–it could certainly be worse."

"_Those_ four were hanging around in the lobby–again. You should tell someone about it."

"Darling…they look thuggish, yes, but they aren't even smoking. I looked enough of a fool complaining to the manager."

"But…if something happened?" Her eyes flickered to Yuko, "In spite of everything….we ought to go to the police."

"Maybe we could move."

"Darling we'd waste our money, unless it was another country."

"Mmm." Yuko was beginning to suspect that they'd found the letter. She hadn't torn it small enough, after pocketing the loose note among the post of five days ago, and reading the whole thing out loud to be sure of the words…

She passed two of them, going out to the bus next morning; Asian youths a little older than her, with shaved heads. She smiled familiarly at the one idly beating up a pillar, who looked almost embarrassed to stick up two fingers.

"Mmm. This ain't Manchester or anything…but I reckon Jaycee's boyfriend knows some guys like that. You serious abou–? course you are, but the nerve…just saying, hey, here I am, after that thing with Paul. Why don't you make him do it? Oh yeah, no one's seen that boy for a week, probably got sent home for being a psycho, present company excepted. What this girl do to you again?"

"Ruin my life."

"Gotta be crazy, doing this for you, even taking you serious…something in your eyes like something else."

"_Arigato_. I were…sure that you help me." Not that the week since she'd dropped into Lois's set hadn't terrified her; but she knew that everyone had a good and bad side. Even if good was so held in, it could do little more than organise a crime for an acquaintance.

And Yuko had known, from experience, that she could reach that side. Everyone protected her, everyone had let her live. Something, in her skinny, timid body drew the demons.

Lois blew out cigarette smoke and laughed, "Something else alright. You better have that money."

Ten days after Paul had walked out of the building, Yuko skipped the last hour of school again. After disappearing into the basement with a book on electronics, she put everything the family had brought from Japan in a bag–as well as those wretched papers–and left them in a closet. Then she stood outside the building, and waited calmly. So much to go wrong–but it couldn't be so important, could it, if she still had yet to pray?

Half-an-hour off schedule, two young men in tracksuits and pure white shoes ambled up to the block of flats. One of them motioned through the door for the Asians in the lobby to let them in; Yuko brushed past and let them in herself. She watched them walk up the steps, counted fifty, and followed. Slowly, but without pause.

On the first landing, she heard the lift chime beneath her. Halfway to the second, all four Asians thundered past her. Yuko approached her own floor, as one of them dropped onto the stairs. Clutching a bloody face, an old face from her class–the island–everything coming apart together–

_Stop fighting_. Yuko heard the blows and curses; trees thumping together in the wind, as demons passed. She'd meant to do something…had to say it. _Stop fighting. All my fault_. She realised she'd stopped existing. In the reality she'd been trapped in, the Lighthouse, only her actions existed.

Yuko rushed back down the stairs, falling twice. The woman was trying to slip out of the lobby; Yuko ran to follow her outside.

"Excuse…"

"Walking, girl…"

"You leave your door open."

"Only want walk…."

"Good people, stop our flat get wrecked. You try phone them?"

The old Malayan woman struck her face like a scorpion–Yuko froze, and almost fell.

"Mama should've done that, once-twice. Is all." She pulled her shawl round her, "Where a bench when need?" She sat on the curb, refusing Yuko's arm.

"I no terrorist; not even politics; never been in war. Just funny life. Got eyes. Knew…Mr Mimura–years back." Yuko had the familiar mad sensation that the old woman was confessing, despite herself, to a youthful affair with a Japanese Prime Minister. "Anyone care about you; they no send anyone to watch that bring trouble. Those four kids all same–know _nothing_. Don't even know how they paid."

"Is flat bugged?"

"Eeee, silly girl; cut own phones off, get people wreck own flat…"

"Write myself death threat…"

Yuko got slapped again, "Eeee! Just to be celebrity."

"Didn't mean parents to see! But you get guards, when you hear with bug." Sniff, pause.

"Don't know bug; someone tell me. Is all…?"

"Paul." A muscle went under the old woman's eye. Yuko heard an ambulance coming up the street.

"I tell you last week, never see boy. This harassing, very much."

Thank you Papa; time to start bluffing, "He around 'very much' when we in detention. Never worry about me, either…"

"That boy _worry_. Not happy. And I not happy. You better see about Papa."

Yuko turned. Her father was outside the ambulance with another man, bending over a stretcher.

"You don't tell no one!"

"Oh, no–I just get carted off. This neighbourhood have nice park."

"…then I realised our wretched phone had been cut off, and my mobile was dead; so I ran down to the nearest shop. I always thought, any real emergency...I'd pretty much flap my hands and scream...I did everything right…still, in broad daylight…"

"Dear, we're always in during the evenings. Everyone in the block was either too old to do anything or asleep."

"Well, I just hope the boy will act more sensibly once he recovers." Yuko suspected otherwise. The five lightly injured youths were long gone.

"You're a hero, Papa." Some more stuffing fell from the ripped sofa as Yuko leaned over. There was a little more damage, most of it light.

The real worry was Lois. At worst, she could confess, go back to hospital. Hurt her wonderful, laughing parents again, who might already have guessed, and who she'd thought she couldn't bear to hurt at all…but she wanted things to change.

Ten days ago, probably before, during her detention, Paul had seen the Malayan woman. Grasped the most distant leaf of the tree that was rooted in Shuya Nanahara.


	7. Chapter 7

Yuko had read a lot more, before the island. She knew the anatomy of stories; the leaving of homes, descents into darkness, the facing of demons, the sacrifice. The return, to aid the ones you loved with your hard-earned new power and understanding. She'd lived it all, wrong way round.

More than happiness, she envied those stories their _ending_. Right or wrong, they had somewhere to go to, one thing that lasted forever. God was about endings, and action to nudge the planet–that was all she could remember of Him, these days.

It was a bright, cold Saturday, and Yuko had made an effort to dress sensibly. People went about slowly and evenly, reflected in glass fronts like ships on a marina. Yuko saw a couple kiss in public, and gave forty pence to a tramp. She went on, towards the bus-stop, going somewhere like everyone else. She'd taken a long time to get moving from where her parents had left her.

Paul would be out too, hanging around like any solitary young delinquent. Like any normal refugee, toeing the line as best he could, trudging round his social service appointments…school was no good. Yuko just _wished_ for her parents not to ring Sue's house. She never wanted to hurt them again.

–0–

_(Extract from The Mouse and the Lion, chpt 5;_

_I lay still. The floor was sticky and I was sinking through it; their bodies sank round me, like they were still my guard. Protectors of a demon._

_The Lion murmured behind me like burning velvet. He would only understand any of it if I turned to face him._

_There was a mouth in the far corner of the cage. I knew what they did, at least in this world…but whatever came afterwards, there would be no one I knew. No such thing as a friend._

_You see it, when blood freezes round your head. Mice are the kindness animals ever, and vermin that should not live. When you cannot do a kind thing, you have one choice only.)_

–0–

"You saved that boy Shuya's life. You let him out of his room, and then–he saved you. Isn't that something?" Papa had said that with a light voice and a death-grip on the back of her shirt. Yuko had asked her mother later if he'd meant things would go back to how they'd been, if she saved another four lives.

"He meant…well, Yuko-chan. Just show us a little mercy." Yuko ravaged her with sorrow, and she smiled, "Neither of us saved anybody."

"Mum, you could've sent me straight to the government–"

"Yuko, we raised you. I know we could've done more–it isn't as if you have to pass an exam. But with God's help, we'd do the same tomorrow."

"Mum…why did they set up the Program?" Koari gazed at the notepad in her lap, "Do you remember Les Miz? We went together, to Tokyo, all those years ago. We got a big tub of popcorn, and I made more noise than I had in a year. A girl got shot, and all that upset me was Papa; he was crying. Lots of others too. I think of that…and the Program fades a little."

"We've always known God together, love, and been really happy as friends. But the world is so dark, parents need to guide their children. If it means hanging over their shoulders every minute like some spy–"

–0–

(Yuko glanced behind; someone _should_ be tailing her, for whatever it was worth).

–0–

"–or if it means making the worst danger, the most terrible fear–just to make you wish you'd listened." Her eyes had edges; cutting inwards. "I just kept on making your packed lunches."

Silence. Yuko nibbling her finger, Koari twisting a pen over the notepad–Yuko couldn't remember when she'd started carrying it everywhere.

"Not matter what you say, you're amazing. You don't need to prove it–like that prisoner in Lez Miz who saved people. Made himself better, though almost everybody ended up dead…."

"But you've always known that all have–" Something flew from the corners of Yuko's eyes. She wanted an answer. _Do you believe that I can change myself; cut off an arm and throw it away?_ _Should I choose even redemption offered free, gentle as a stiletto in the face? I could strive for years, and when I came to the test again, I would lose._

Koari _could've_ told her daughter how much God loved her, but simply said that she did.

"Yuko, I love you…please, see what you feel like tomorrow."

Good advice, Mum.

–0–

Yuko got off the bus in her own borough–funny word, like somewhere a little animal lived–and made her way to the community centre. A flier said that the Refugee Support group was open; Yuko sat on a bench outside, watching the people. All the old crowd, smiling and joking faintly. She'd never seen the news reports from Afganistan; her closest idea of a bomb was a cordite-smelling hole in the world, that would scatter Yukie and Chisato and all of them over the street. Bleeding like they would never stop; not with so many people feeding the supply.

In time, someone came out of the building, and stopped behind her. Yuko walked into the underpass, face lowered.

"Long time, no see."

"Reason?"

"You know it."

"Why no school for you? People notice."

"Huh."

"Need to give you message from them." She re-emerged onto the street, calmly turned a corner and stopped.

"You do that."

Until they were no one was following, it would take a minute of silence for him to vanish. Unseen words beat against Yuko's skin as she waited.

"Tell me story. Thing about you."

She heard him chuckle, behind her. "Girl, _you_ the one needs explain yourself. Me, I not doing nothing crazy–nothing new."

"I me." Yuko nipped back into the opposite street; brushed, with indefinable familiarity, through a random human knot. Pick-n-mix people. "Like them–child of God."

"Murderers. Always true, never go away." They were walking faster.

"Then what the point? What you change, by letting off…?" The hand on Yuko's back pushed her into the doorway.

–0–

An hour later, Yuko appeared on the doorstep of her family's flat.

"What…Yuko we agreed we would come and meet you; it's two bus rides…hey? Yuko-chan?"

Yuko sat on a cushion, bit her finger absently and quite hard. Her father's flushed, panicked face wavered between her eyelashes.

"Yuko? What happened? What have you done…?" He suddenly gripped her arms.

"I'm sorry. I just needed to get back to you–" Her father held her; her mother watched from a doorway, notebook moving in her hands as she was ready to tear it.

"Yuko…things have been hard, this last year. We've had bad choices, or no choice at all, and we lost things that make a place home. Things in you, Yuko…we've prayed…prayed myself sick…just for things to go back to how they were."

"They never will, Papa. It's okay, just so hard–" Fingers grew into her shoulders, and Yuko cried out.

"My girl…we made a mistake. You have to accept God's love yourself–Yuko, come back to Church."

"Not this week…" Yuko smile and sobbed.

She looked at a twisted face, eyes glaring as if the lids had been torn away.

"Yes, this week. No matter how you feel about it, what kind of scene you make, _something has to be done_! There's only one answer I'll accept…Yuko."

Her father gripped her shoulders, shook her like an emptying tin, and Yuko looked in his eyes the whole time.

"Papa, that hurts."

All three of the Sakkais found it hard to speak. Yuko's mother knelt beside her; looked at her eyes. Souchiro Sakkai looked at his hands, and shook

"You're not afraid. You're back…?"

Yuko shook her head, smiled, and hugged her father so desperately she knocked his glasses off. All of them clung together, breathing like castaways, then got up and went about living.

–0–

Yuko had almost run when Paul touched her back; it was harder than killing someone; but she had to do it. Everything is easy if you believe that.

She could see people had been to the derelict building before–no, person. Paul shoved her out the way of the windows, and waited for her to speak.

"Can I ask–who is Nanahara Shuya?"

"Someone who care about everyone. He care about ones he _kill_–all the ones I ever met don't give a shit who this kid is, how old when they shoot him, or whether their land sinking into the sea. I think I'm real lucky just to see that Shuya see _something_; and I gotta care about the only one who cares for me."

His voice was a placid lake of anger; permanent anger Yuko had never heard before; certainly never from a girl (And a boy could do things to her a girl couldn't…).

"You…right, Nanahara like that." Paul breathed out; Yuko remember they couldn't have met "But I only ever feel so certain as that–when it God."

"That why you here? Beating your fear down?" Yuko dropped her words like glass treasures.

"I believe; but you gotta accept God yourself. I can't do that, don't know if I ever can. But His the only good way I know to act; I do it even if I can't bear to meet or hear him, anymore. I tell you, don't follow Shuya, don't be a killer!"

Paul's dark eyes burning through her. Yuko saw then that he really believed no one cared for him in the world. It was why he acted; different from her, who could only do a thing outside of God's spirit because people loved her (Mum, Papa, curse my memory if this goes wrong).

"Ain't good you came here…"

"Say you won't do this, or I tell them everything." He moved closer to her, whispering.

"Don't believe you know one thing. But Shuya's girl make fuss, they investigate, they find. Why you do this?"

"Why you never just say 'Crazy girl, course I never blow people up'?" Yuko smiled, "You need this too."

Paul stopped. His breath shocked Yuko with its force.

"Everyone's a killer, Yuko. You _know_ that, I always see it, why you–?"

"Show me."

Yuko's eyes went up, as if she were falling between the sky and the ground. Her lips moved, as Paul put his hands on her neck.

–0–

_(Extract from The Mouse and the Lion, chpt 6;_

_It kept purring, like it was lost, and didn't know what would happen. I'd seen scabs under his paws; he smelt like death and life and struggle and shit._

_I stepped towards the mouth, and he purred louder. He turned me back to his eyes._

"_No. Don't know what's right. Can't know, shouldn't be alive…" The purr became a growl. He lifted himself in his bonds, and in his eyes I _was_, and nothing else._

_Slowly, I moved back through the bodies of my friends, and, like they had, dragged myself over the Lion. I gnawed at his bonds a long time.)_


	8. Chapter 8

_(Extract from __The Mouse and the Lion__, chptr 6_

_Mice are made to die. Whatever comes to pass, lions are not. The chasm between our souls, to a mouse, is unreachably great. As I fell away with the last of the lion's bonds, he looked at the tiny creatures drowned in blood, and spoke to me._

"_Dear child. Grief is great. Let us be good to one another."_

_Then he broke the cage apart, and moved through that place like the sun. He shook every smaller cage of mice in his paws, but he could not unlock them. He couldn't break them without killing the mice he loved. Things in white rushed into the lab, and he killed them with a flash and a sour smell...)

* * *

_

24th of March, 1998.A cafe in London near Tower Bridge. Somehow, Yuko was there; wearing a pink skirt and a white jacket, gazing into the street over a cooling hot chocolate.

Paul was before her, grinning, arms spread. He wore an army shirt and shorts and carried nothing Yuko could see.

"How's you?" Yuko was in the middle of her period, and had felt ready to die, as the saying went, for days.

"So-so. How you feel about this?"

"Seems I can't kill."

"You couldn't kill _me_. No one does." Paul sat down close to Yuko She realised he had a warm smell, and a direct stare something like a cat's.

"Was a time, folk just had to kill devils from far away. Folk moved 'round less. Nowdays, there's none to kill but neighbours. Ones that could've been friends." Paul glanced up when Yuko made a noise; she was looking at the marks on both his wrists. "That was first time they were gonna deport me. That time, nothing else I could do. Looks like blowing up that big bridge ain't a second option after all."

"Paul-kun... what you gonna do now?"

"In prison? Hey? You told the police about this right? You know Wild Seven would never get one boy with one bomb. Three, four more guys out there, they never met you. I never met them, didn't know nothing but my own target–only know the day. You won't believe it feels like shit to rat them in, but I'll tell you–"

"No. You had trouble enough." Paul watched Yuko, as she bit at her finger, and spoke.

"If I could find those boys, I'd tell them to fight their demons. I can't judge them, though, after what I've done. The world is wrong, I don't know what these bombs will do–"

"Show folk they can't ignore us. There things in the world that make us kill, demons, injustice, and they gotta face up to it–"

"Yes. But people are going to die." Yuko's cheeks were slick with tears, "For a shameful reason, all of my own. I'm a sinner, after all, I let them die."

Paul stared at Yuko, as if she there was something he had never believed was in the world. With the instinctive caution of a child, he touched Yuko's hair; just as carefully she put her arms on his chest, and cried in silence. The words in Paul's ears were in a language he knew no human could learn.

"Hey, hey...that's praying, right? You feel better?"

"No...I never had a reason to cry. Mercy greater than my sin; he told me so every day. It was shining out, it took so long to believe. You–didn't you always want a real family, Paul-kun? I'd try; and He'd take it away, all the anger, and loneliness...?"

"I'm sorry–I just don't know it. Seen the truth of this world," Paul's fingers parted Yuko's hair slowly; "Hardly nothing there that shines." Yuko shifted gently as she placed her hand on Paul's heart.

"Whatever you've done...you're not a person to be guilty. I won't let you be."

"You strange, Yuko." She felt light, warm, never strange, but she knew that it was.

"Yeah. But not wrong."

They stayed close for a brief time. Then they departed, like ordinary passers-by who had one thing left presently to do.

–0–

Yuko never heard the noise, but Paul did. Then the sirens–two streets from the fifth tallest building in London, they smelt the ash. Tower 42 had had harsher use from the IRA, but Yuko looked up to where windows shone in the smoke, and realised that it was worse than she remembered.

The pillars of smoke over the lobby were wings unfolding from the depths. Glass coated the street with leprous white–Yuko pulled back a little girl in sandals preparing to rush over it all to the door. People were staggering out with medical workers, from the wreck of all things useless to the dead. Yuko stroked her girl's forehead, whispered into her bleeding ears that she shouldn't be afraid, because she shone with light.

She had run, up the stairs to the top of the Lighthouse. No more demons, no empty eyes, anywhere, ever. She had wanted the Outer Darkness, all the way. But she had been stopped by a stone on her head. Nanahara had stumped up to her body, held her in his arms; too weak to struggle as much as a doll, she had begged him to let her go.

"No." He gazed straight and true above her head, "Here to save you. If it means breaking legs...shit, what does it mean? You gotta be safe." They had gone down the stairs together, and Yuko had known nothing until the isolated park where she'd been pushed into her parents arms with a stack of forged papers. She had known the truth since then; people could always be kind, and they could always kill. And now she understood it, tripping through the silent crowd to the woman in a suit crying onto her own knees.

"You good. Sit down here, don't look, everything good..." Paul was yelling for a medic, moving through the people on the wings gathered above his head.

Yuko loved him; loved the woman she held, loved the bombers she would never see, loved the six friends who were somewhere among the people, and saw her. The man screaming something about an invasion who knocked her to the floor among the heaving crowd. All of them were angels, burning with the pure light they couldn't even see. And God was there, in the crowd and in the tower, wounded and saving, filling the air with a love that _changed_. It wasn't real. But it was what Yuko saw.

–0–

Kaori Sakkaki looked thin and tired. From her hospital bed, Yuko saw her mother's heart in her eyes–still liquid, still falling.

"Yuko. The worst, and then this..." She mouthed without breath, and looked away "What did they hope for, by making everyone afraid? They're saying all Japanese should be interned; that soldiers from this country should join the Americans in Afghanistan. Fear makes people accept such things."

"Mother...can I say what I think? Before this bombs, injustice, war, and death were ignored. People might have cheered in a war even if this had never been, because they didn't know what it meant, or what they feared. I just hope everyone will see evil and death and run the narrow path to life."

Koari touched Yuko's forehead. Her daughter life and reason were all she wanted to feel.

"Life...it could almost be an experiment. Like we're products being tested to destruction...or mice poisoned and cut up in handfuls, Yuko, I'm sorry...but who made the experiment? The terrorists, Japan? The West, the world...God...oh, Yuko..." Something dislodged their bodies, and they fell together, holding with all their strength. "We couldn't protect you again, but please believe we've always loved you–"

"_Yes,_ Mama–your love comes from God. I thank him for you and Papa every time I pray."

Before her mother went, Yuko told her about some things she had seen, and believed she always would. Kaori told Yuko that her job was slipping; proofreading wasn't something she had ever wanted to do.

"Back in Highschool...I wanted badly to write children's books. I couldn't write, of course, and I knew that it wouldn't serve God...but I think I could learn to write, if someone needed it."

–0–

Presently, Yuko's father arrived, and they talked together about when Yuko's leg would be better (someone had stepped on her after she'd been knocked down), and what they _wouldn't_ do when it was, quite briefly. When they went to leave, the hospital was practically deserted, with the exception of an old woman with square glasses who met them at the door of the ward, and struck Kaori in the face.

"You did this. Monkey-girl, savage–true nature _will_ out."

A moment later, a woman with a scarf covering her face brushed past Sakkaki on her way to Yuko's bedside, with the briefest glance. Souichiro looked straight back at Yuko, and let out a breath from the roots of his lungs.

"We're sorry –for what happened–God is still near. We're sorry." Yuko's mother and father leant on each other as they left the hospital; the old woman following them, blank eyed.

The woman at Yuko's bedside removed her headscarf. Yuko closed her eyes, "Which lavatory at Shiroiwa High had a broken tank cover?"

"The fourth from the door. You're looking quite well, Yuko."

"You look better, Noriko. What happened to Paul?"

"His residency expires on his eighteenth; he was ready to disappear. Shuya said if you believe he never talked to the police, he'll promise to let him go. He never ordered people to kill themselves, or taught them; everyone that comes to him is ready, or we thought so. You probably won't see him again."

"Maybe. But I don't think so, in this world. He'll be alright."

"Yuko, People can be good, but if a God in this world had ever loved us, he would save us from it. How is it that you can ever believe?"

"Because I see him every day."

"Dear Yuko... aren't some of the things you see–?"

"I killed, and Shuya saved me. My parents took me back, Paul was kind to me. I don't see death at wait any more in the human heart, just love and mercy–we_ are_ one with Jesus as Jesus is one with God. Isn't that fine? I know my parents couldn't save me, but I see their love every morning and night.

"Only you could ever tell him; please. What he's doing means nothing–he's killing children of God because of fear–"

"It means something. And he has reason to be afraid. Enough reason that you didn't speak out. I'm sorry, but you're for us now–there's no release from it, ever."

"I know. But I'm not for what you do. The truth is, I couldn't be against Nanahara. He saved me from the Program." Noriko closed her eyes before she spoke;

"He saved you from death. And that's the only way any of us will escape the program; any of us in the world. He never changed, you know. There's no one in world who can't be his friend, and he'd kill them one by one to protect me. I know that sounds terrible..."

"I know it sounds like that with me."

"It might. I've got eyes as well as ears though. I'll tell Shuya what you said. He'll have lit a candle for all the people who died today."

"Will he ever run out of candles? Only six girls, and every day it seems too much if I could choose to remember one."

"Remember them all. It's your job specification, surely? A light on a hill, to show the world the way."

"Thank you...Noriko. I'll do my best."

Yuko Sakkaki leant back in bed, eyes wide and shining. Noriko Nakagawa had heard that the union of God and man was supposed to make ever human part of one body. She could believe Yuko heard more voices than one, speaking her words.

"It's nothing. What are friends for?"

* * *

_(Extract from __The Mouse and the Lion__, chptr 8_

_I met the lion one more time, right outside my new home. He was thin, and crawling with flies. The blood of Things covered him up his haunches._

"_I cannot endure evil. When you freed me, you should have seen my nature."_

"_If you can't pass by this house without killing, please kill no one but me."_

"_I cannot kill goodness. It is my nature of perfect justice..."_

"_You look the part. But you're far away from perfect."_

"_Then what is right for me to do?" The lion swayed slightly, as I led him through the streets, back to the lab. The dead things were still there, and all the screaming mice in bloody cages. No one had brought them anything for a week, and they had grown too weak to kill each other for food. _

_Without a word, the lion gathered all the mice around him. He pressed his sides to the bars of each cage, and the mice left in every one tore into him, gulping down his flesh with their tears. His golden presence sank down to a pool of red, and he looked at me._

"_Remember me. As I was."_

_I looked at the mice in their cages, the ones who had eaten of the lion. I was afraid; but I had seen the way to freedom. And that's too beautiful ever to refuse.)

* * *

_

_A/N: That's it. Eighteen months that might've been happier if I was only putting finger to keyboard this minute...but perhaps not. I apprehend that this story has been a terrible mess, but hope that some entertainment has been provided. Finally giving Yuko a life (though, like freedom, life cannot be unearned), was a great relief, as it will be to actually write about Battle Royale again. Thank you to Tokyoboots and Loneheart for some very well timed reviews, wishing everyone the blessings of God who lives in us all...even writers of suspect fanfics. _


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